Big Guns

by Steve Israel

  “You’re making this an uphill battle,” Sam muttered.

  Lois knew Sam was right. The battle was uphill and the hill was about a mile away, past a broken streetlight, sloping luxuriantly to a sun-kissed plateau, where actresses stole husbands and now Jack Steele wanted to take her job. She watched Sam clench his fists on the table. She thought about the night at that table, long ago, when Larry matter-of-factly delivered the news that changed everything.

  Lois wasn’t surprised by her husband’s announcement. She’d suspected an affair for months, though she was initially puzzled that the celebrity Valerie Verrine would fall for Larry from so rari-fied an eminence as Billionaires Bluff. But, Lois figured, that’s how people behaved up there. When they owned everything, they took what they didn’t even want, including Larry Liebowitz, a local real estate lawyer in the early stages of a midlife crisis, whom Verrine eyed at the closing of her newly acquired beachfront property. What maddened Lois that night was Larry’s cloddish timing. Sunshine and Jeffrey were watching a children’s sitcom in the next room, which meant that Larry pronounced the marriage dead to a televised laugh track in the background. “Please, leave,” Lois ordered. “I’ll tell the children.” Larry exited, never to return.

  Lois shuffled into the living room, turned the television off to the confused protests of Sunshine and Jeffrey, and broke the news. Years later Lois felt a chill whenever she recalled Sunshine’s eyes, widening in disbelief, then narrowing as if squeezing out her rage. Sunshine raced out, the paper-thin screen door flapping violently behind her. Hours later, Lois received a phone call from Sam. He’d found Sunshine hidden in his barn. He’d take her to Joan’s Bakery to “let her settle,” then drive her home. Lois spent the rest of the night at the kitchen table, crying, until she heard the groan of the screen door. Sunny stepped through, eyes icy, cutting right through Lois, as if she wasn’t there. As if this was Lois’s fault.

  Lois’s thoughts returned to her neighbors. “We’re just going to do whatever it takes to win.”

  “With what?” Sam asked incredulously.

  “With us, Sam. Grassroots. I’ll knock on every door in this town. We’ll get volunteers. Who wants to volunteer?”

  Her neighbors seemed engrossed in the orange sunflower patterns on Lois’s dishes.

  “No one? Just me? Fine.”

  Patsy Hardameyer sighed. “I suppose I can make up some lawn signs.” At eighty-five years old, Patsy had a flair for arts and crafts. “Let’s see . . . How about ‘We Love Lois.’ With a heart where ‘Love’ would be?”

  Coach McHenry clawed at his whistle lanyard. “I’ll ask some of the football team to stuff mailboxes after practice.”

  “Good! Now, we need a campaign manager. . . .”

  Everyone looked at Sam, who focused sharply on the uneaten blueberry cobbler on his plate.

  “Sam,” Lois coaxed.

  He mumbled in protest, which Lois considered assent.

  She folded her hands on the kitchen table and proclaimed, “I promise—we . . . will . . . win . . . this . . . election.”

  The table wobbled, like the lives of those who sat around it.

  18

  Sidney Schwartzman ended the phone call with a satisfied smack of his thick wet lips and thought, Life’s a gamble. And the house always wins.

  He was sprawled on a chaise lounge on the high terrace of his penthouse at the King David Resort in Miami Beach. He was wrapped in an oversized white King David luxury robe (“Fit for a King. Available for $399 by Calling Guest Services”). His skinny legs protruded from the robe like withering branches on a gnarled tree. The Atlantic Ocean shimmered below him in the early dawn, and a warm wind washed over the few reedy strands of hair remaining on his scalp. Planes glided across an orange sky headed toward Miami International Airport, vaporous streams of revenue for Sidney’s real estate empire.

  Denied his Taj Mahal by the Village of Asabogue, Schwartzman had retreated to other perches: the sprawling penthouse atop his resort, his private island in the Caribbean, the castles in Palm Springs, Palm Beach, and on Park Avenue. Still, Schwartzman wasn’t the type to rest easy. He kept score of things: the insults to his honor, the acts of disrespect, the people who got in his way that he had to get out of the way, like that little woman in Asabogue who’d blocked him from building “Taj Too.” She’d made him appear impotent to the actress for whom the dream palace was planned. No wonder she’d left! Now she was known as “ex-wife five.” Or was it six?

  No matter. The phone call would settle the score with Lois Liebowitz. He smiled.

  Of course, Sidney believed there was more to life than winning personal grudge matches. There was Western civilization to save from the jihadists, environmentalists, socialists, leftists, and all those other “-ists” threatening America. The nation was being taken over by the bleeding hearts and weak-kneed who wanted to redistribute his hard-earned stock dividends before surrendering to a new world caliphate. Sidney thought of himself as free enterprise’s last line of defense. It wasn’t cheap. He personally bankrolled an outfit called FreedomWonks, which was comfortably ensconced in a redbrick town house on Capitol Hill’s Massachusetts Avenue. It was staffed by former deputy assistants and deputy assistant secretaries from long-ago Republican presidential administrations. Now they were called “distinguished fellows” and “senior policy analysts.” Their “best of” analyses included:

  “So Farsi, So Good: The Manageable Cost of a Nuclear Strike on Iran.”

  “Why Coolidge Was Right.”

  “Global Warming: Is It Chilly in Here or Is It Just Me?”

  The reports weren’t exactly candidates for the New York Times Book Review. But who needed the Times when Sidney had SOS-News, the latest acquisition in Sidney Oscar Schwartzman’s ever-expanding empire. A FreedomWonks thinker had a thought, a theory, an opinion. Research was conducted, then accessorized with footnotes and draped in a laminate cover. It was shipped to an SOSNews producer, who would book the author to appear for an on-set interview. One minute your eyes are deep in statistical abstracts on the U.S. workforce in 1929, the next you’re squinting at the harsh lights of an SOSNews studio listening to an anchor giddily praise your “trenchant analysis.” All of this added a veneer of academia to the raw tonnage of Schwartzman’s wealth.

  One day, Schwartzman took his favorite Supreme Court justice for a few rounds of golf. Mr. Justice won the game, but justice lost. A few weeks later the court ruled that Super PACs could accept unlimited, undisclosed gobs of corporate money. Americans for America was born with an initial endowment of fifty million dollars spread across ten of the most competitive Democratic-held districts in America. All ten Democratic incumbents lost.

  As Schwartzman said: “Never bet against the house, unless it’s a Democrat in the House.”

  Sidney went on a spending spree. Buying up congressional districts across America in a real-life political version of Monopoly. “This message paid for and authorized by Americans for America” was the death knell of Democrats in competitive districts. They may as well have played “Taps.”

  And now, the phone call he had just completed with Jack Steele—another victory to savor!

  Steele had sounded breathless. “Sidney. Remember that woman in Asabogue who stopped your building permit?”

  How could I forget? he thought.

  “I’m getting rid of her!” Steele proclaimed.

  Sidney remained silent. Whenever he spoke on his cell phone he assumed someone was listening. The SEC, the FEC, the FCC, the FDA, OSHA, the Nevada Gaming Commission, various Arab intelligence services, the Democrats, the divorce lawyers. Those platypus lips were evolutionary, a protective layer against saying anything that could be used against him in a court of law.

  “I’m running against her for mayor. We’re going to beat her. But I need your help.”

  “How much?” Two of Sidney’s favorite words.

  “How much can you do?”

  Such a foolish question.

/>   “Why don’t you fly out? I want you at my official announcement at Village Hall next week.”

  “Next week? Why so long?”

  “Well, these things take time. Staging. Lighting. Press advisories.”

  Sidney shook his head. “No! No! No! I have a much better idea. You will announce tomorrow!”

  He ended the call. Considered the empire he had built around him, minus one replica of the Taj Mahal in Asabogue. “Never bet against Schwartzman,” he said as he speed-dialed SOSNews headquarters in New York.

  *

  Even under the searing studio lights, there was a cold war on the set of SOSNews. During a commercial break, Megan Slattery was wedged between fellow anchors Robert Thomas and Ashley Barnes on a curved red couch. They were so close that Megan could smell her colleagues’ industrial-strength hairspray. It stung at her eyes. As usual, Robert was tormenting her with his disgusting off-camera rituals. He cleared his throat like a Jet Ski grinding on phlegm, and darted his jaw back and forth while tapping out some kind of Morse code with his teeth. Megan knew he was just waiting to roll over her lines with that exaggerated frat boy laugh. And Ashley—Could you possibly hike that skirt any higher on those toothpick thighs? I mean, are you auditioning to host an infomercial on purging, girl?

  “Five seconds,” a woman’s voice snapped into her earpiece.

  Those disembodied voices, she thought, commanding her from the black depths of the studio. Like gods, giving and taking away her time, choosing between darkness and light on millions of television screens, deciding between Megan Slattery and a commercial for motorized chairlifts.

  Robert emitted a final hack, and Megan checked for pieces of lung that may have landed on her lap. Ashley crossed her legs and clamped her knees shut. Ashley’s legs were fair and balanced, to use a competing network’s favorite phrase.

  “Three . . . two . . . one.”

  Upbeat music streamed into Megan’s earpiece. She froze a smile and locked her eyes on the teleprompter beaming at her from the dark.

  She read: “Welcome back. Now let’s go to some quick headlines . . .”

  She heard a swooshing sound. It ushered in the footage that accompanied each story, creating a sensation of fast pace and quick change. Sidney Schwartzman was in the news business to make money, which required him to sell the news at volume discounts. They crammed shorter stories between more commercials, tailored to the national attention deficit disorder. A country once engrossed in the Great Debates could no longer absorb any information exceeding an Instagram post. Every television remote was on hair trigger.

  SOS. All the news fit to swoosh.

  Of course, SOSNews bites were designed to bite into America’s thinning skin. It was news based not on fact, but phobia. Wars erupting on America, on taxpayers, on capitalism, on Christmas; terrorists hiding in mountains and lurking in malls; bureaucrats raising taxes on hard-working Americans to lather welfare on illegal aliens; secularists chasing God from classrooms; the politically correct but morally bankrupt; the Muslims; and mayhem. No wonder it was called SOS. Not a tribute to Sidney Oscar Schwartzman, but a cry for help from a sinking civilization.

  Swooooosh.

  She followed the teleprompter: “Despite liberal outrage, conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh has won the National Toddler Book Association’s top award for The Little Tax Cut That Could. The—”

  “Good job, El Rushbo!” Robert interrupted with that unctuous laugh.

  I hope you choke on your lavaliere, Megan thought, smile in place.

  Swooooosh.

  She continued: “And outrage in Pennsylvania, where liberal authorities banned an opening prayer at Camp Hack-Ah-Loos-Ah’s annual parent-child water balloon toss.”

  On a monitor below the camera, Megan caught a glimpse of a riot over the absence of a peaceful water balloon prayer. The balloons flew like Hellfire missiles, splattering against flesh in violent explosions of neon latex and water.

  “Horrible!” Rob puffed.

  “Poor kids!” Ashley sniffled.

  Swooooosh.

  “Now to some breaking news from a big star in a little village that’s trying to ban guns. Let’s go live to Sean Wagner for an SOS-News exclusive. Sean, seems like this small town is fighting back, right?”

  A control room director snapped his fingers and Sean Wagner instantly appeared in front of Asabogue Village Hall, which looked particularly dreary that overcast morning. A gentle breeze rustled his lustrous blond hair. He wore “broadcast casual”: a dark blue button-down shirt and khakis, and held a large SOS microphone under his square jaw. “Thaaat’s right, Megan! I’m here in the Village of Assss-a-bogue, Long Island, with someone who knows a litt-ell something about fighting back: veteran film star Jack Steele!”

  The camera pulled back for what the film industry once called “the Steele Reveal.” There was Jack, hands perched on hips, elbows at sharp angles, spine stiff, stomach taut, eyes narrowing on the camera lens, as if sizing up every viewer individually.

  Sean began, “Jack, people know you as the hero of action movies, but now you’re taking on a new role.”

  “Yep.” Jack kept his eyes on the camera and his voice to a raspy whisper. “I’m running for mayor. You know the joke: politics is show business for ugly people.”

  Robert bellowed. Ashley giggled. Megan smiled icily through her rising blood pressure.

  Sean said, “You had a great career on the big screen. Why run for office in this tiny little village?”

  “Well, first of all, because I love this tiny little village. And second, because the current mayor—Liebowitz is her name—wants to take away our guns.” His pronunciation of “Liebowitz” was pitch perfect—if the pitch was low and to the right. Liebowitz: as in Jew-ish-sounding, loud-talking, left-leaning. He continued: “I suppose I could just sit back and enjoy my retirement. But I’ll never sit back when our Constitution is being attacked. Not in my backyard.”

  On set, Rob oozed “Woooow” and Ashley cooed “Good for him!”

  “You’re talking about the Chicago Compact?” asked Sean.

  “Yep. I’m fed up with liberal politicians forcing their agendas on the rest of America. If you don’t like guns, move to Chicago. Their city motto oughta be ‘Duck and cover.’”

  Megan heard the slapping of Robert’s palms against his knees. “My point is, why can’t these liberals just leave small towns like Asabogue alone? We’re the real America.”

  Sean could have mentioned that not every real town in America had a median income of $2.2 million. But “median income” tended to lose viewers, except on CNBC.

  “Now, when do you plan to announce your candidacy—offi-cially?”

  “Just did. It’s Steele versus Liebowitz.”

  He shared the name of his newly designed campaign website and smiled, his teeth glowing like a bright beacon that cloudy morning.

  Sean turned to the camera. “Megan, Ash, Robert, as they say in the movies, thaaaat’s a wrap. From the litt-ell village of Assss-a-bogue!”

  “Carpe diem Sean-o!” Robert bellowed.

  Megan thought, When they pull your earpiece out, can they see to the other side of your head?

  She read, “We’ll be back after this break. Stay with SOS.”

  *

  In her office, Sunny poked at the television remote, slumped in her chair, and exhaled sharply as the television darkened. She imagined millions of SOSNews viewers receiving the gospel about her mother as the political Antichrist, rushing to their checkbooks and computers to donate to Jack Steele’s campaign.

  Sunny knew this was only the debut of the Lois Liebowitz roast. This had docudrama potential. The networks devoted weeks of constant coverage to plane crashes. Now SOS would train its cameras on the spectacular crash and burn of Lois Liebowitz. Politicians would push each other out of the way to condemn her. Pundits would become studio armchair generals: analyzing, projecting, dissecting every battle in the Liebowitz-Steele election. Election bulletins woul
d flash into America’s homes, accompanied by the military cadence of drums and trumpets. The woman Sunny called mother would become a household name—vilified on SOS prime-time talk shows where there wasn’t talking as much as there was trashing; debated and debased at dinner tables across America.

  And when it was over—when Lois’s dreams were incinerated by the licking flames of SOSNews—the network would simply cast her aside. Not a heave-ho but a ho-hum. The Lois Liebowitz show would imperceptibly fade from America’s screens, replaced by a new ratings favorite: a terrorist, a flag burner, a book by a former subterranean-level Obama appointee admitting that, yes, the former president was a closet Muslim who secretly prayed toward Mecca in a White House closet.

  Swooooosh.

  No one would remember Lois Liebowitz. Except those who had to live with her, Sunny thought.

  Sunny hated her mother. She never imagined the entire nation joining the cause.

  Brought to you by SOSNews.

  She twirled her hair.

  19

  In a drab six-story brown and beige office building near the foot of Capitol Hill, at the far end of a dingy corridor, was the national fund-raising firm PAC It in Associates. There, an attractive raven-haired consultant with long freckled legs leaned back at her cluttered desk and blew a delirious breath while thoroughly enjoying the chorus of her favorite song, “Click-Click Cha-Ching . . . Click-Click Cha-Ching.” The music played in her head, but in the past few days it was as if the National Philharmonic was right there with her.

  Click—the sound of donors across America hitting a computer link that said “Contribute to Jack Steele Right Now!” Cha-Ching— the ring of the donation as it landed instantly in the Steele campaign treasury.

  Since Jack’s announcement on SOSNews earlier that week, the clicking and cha-chinging had overwhelmed Jack Steele’s campaign website, crashing it six times. A grand total of $1.6 million was raised, in increments of $5, $35, $50, from rich people and poor, young and old, blue states and red. A contribution from Diane Fretzeil of Elmsville, Indiana, came with this e-mail: “I’m a senior citizen on Social Security and I struggle to make ends meet. But I’m a churchgoing grandmother who loves Jesus and my country. So here’s five dollars to help you beat that gun-hating bitch!”